Skyward (The Skyward Series Book 1)

“I’m not going to ask you where you got this,” Rig said. He was standing, his hands on his hips, looking at the booster, which M-Bot and I had moved to the cavern floor.

“See, that’s why you’re in engineering,” I said. “You’re smart.”

“Not smart enough to stay out of this mess,” he said.

I grinned. M-Bot’s maintenance gear included a small mobile acclivity ring for service purposes. Dwarfed by the big one he flew with, it was a small hoop no larger than my hands pressed together, with a rechargeable power source.

Rig and I placed the maintenance ring under the booster. That—once activated—raised the hunk of metal into the air about a meter. Together we pushed it into place behind M-Bot, near where it would need to be installed.

“So?” I asked. “Will it fit?”

“I can probably make it fit,” Rig said, prodding at the booster with a wrench. “Whether I can make it work or not will depend on how damaged it is. Please tell me you didn’t rip this off a functioning DDF ship.”

“You said you weren’t going to ask.”

He flipped the wrench in his hand, eyeing the booster. “You had better thank me in your speech when you hit ace.”

“Six times.”

“And name your firstborn son after me.”

“Firstborn will be Executioner Destructorius. But you can have number two.”

“And bake me some killer algae biscuits or something.”

“Do you seriously want to eat anything I’ve baked?”

“Now that I think about it, scud no. But next time I bake some, you better have a compliment ready. No more ‘It would taste better with some rat in it.’ ”

“On my honor as a pilot,” I said solemnly.

Rig put his hands back on his hips, then grinned widely. “We’re actually going to do it, aren’t we? We’re going to make this old bucket fly.”

“I’d be insulted at that,” M-Bot said through the speakers at the side of the ship, “if I were human!”

Rig rolled his eyes. “Would you go keep that thing occupied? I don’t want it jabbering at me while I work.”

“I can both talk to her and bother you!” M-Bot called. “Multitasking is an essential means by which an artificial intelligence achieves more efficiency than fleshy human brains.”

Rig looked at me.

“No insult intended!” M-Bot added. “You have very nice shoes!”

“We’ve been working on his compliments,” I said.

“They aren’t nearly as stupid as the rest of your outfit!”

“He still needs practice.”

“Just stop him from bothering me, please,” Rig said, lugging over his toolbox. “Honestly, if I ever find the person who thought it was a good idea to make a machine that talked to you while you were repairing it …”

I climbed up to the cockpit and latched it, pressurizing and soundproofing it. “Leave him alone, M-Bot,” I said, settling into my seat. “Please.”

“If you wish. My processors are busy anyway, trying to devise a proper joke about the fact that Rig is installing me a new butt. My logic circuits are arguing that the expeller I use for old oil is actually a better metaphoric anus.”

“I really don’t want to talk about your scatological functions,” I said, leaning back. I stared up through the glass, but there was only blackness and dark rock.

“I believe that human beings need humor during times of depression,” M-Bot said. “To lighten their grim outlook and make them forget their tragedies.”

“I don’t want to forget my tragedies.”

M-Bot was silent. Then, in a smaller voice—somehow vulnerable—he asked, “Why do humans fear death?”

I frowned toward the console, where I knew the camera was. “Is that another attempt at humor?”

“No. I want to understand.”

“You offer lengthy commentary about humans, but you can’t understand something as simple as fear of death?”

“Define it? Yes. But understand it? … No.”

I leaned my head back again. How did one explain mortality to a robot? “You miss your memories, right? The data banks that were destroyed in your crash? So you understand loss.”

“I do. But I cannot miss my own existence—by definition. So why would I fear it?”

“Because … someday you’ll stop being here. You’ll cease to exist. Get destroyed.”

“I am powered down repeatedly. I was powered down for a hundred and seventy-two years. How is it different if I’m never powered on again?”

I fidgeted, playing with the control sphere’s buttons. I still had six more days of leave. Of simply … sitting around? Supposedly recovering? But really just prodding at that hole inside me, like a child constantly picking at a scab?

“Spensa?” M-Bot said, pulling me back. “Should I fear death?”

“A good Defiant doesn’t,” I said. “So maybe you were programmed this way on purpose. And it’s not really my own death that I fear. Actually, I don’t fear anything. I’m not a coward.”

“Of course.”

“But losing the others has me … wavering. I should be strong enough to withstand this. I knew what it would cost to become a pilot. I’ve trained, and prepared, and listened to Gran-Gran’s stories, and …” I took a deep breath.

“I miss my pilot,” M-Bot said. “I ‘miss’ him because of the loss of knowledge. Without proper information, I cannot judge my future actions. My ability to interface with the world, and to be efficient, is lessened.” He hesitated. “I am broken, and do not know how to fulfill my purpose. Is this how you feel?”

“Maybe.” I made a fist, forcing myself to stop fidgeting. “But I’m going to beat it, M-Bot.”

“It must be nice to have free will.”

“You have free will too. We’ve talked about this.”

“I simulate it in order to seem more palatable to humans,” he said. “But I do not have it. Free will is the ability to ignore your programming. Humans can ignore theirs, but I—at a fundamental level—cannot.”

“Humans don’t have programming.”

“Yes you do. You have too much of it. Conflicting programs, none of it interfacing properly, all calling different functions at the same time—or the same function for contradictory reasons. Yet you ignore it sometimes. That is not a flaw. It is what makes you you.”

I mulled that over, but I was so anxious that I had trouble sitting still. Finally, I pushed open the canopy and climbed down, then fetched my radio and my pack.

Rig was absorbed by his work, humming to himself a tune I didn’t know as he stripped the broken pieces of fuselage from the booster.

I stepped over. “You need any help?” I asked him.

“Not at the moment. I might need you in a day or two, if I have to replace wires again.” He got another section off, then poked into the hole with a screwdriver. “Good thing I got the shield igniter back together. I’m going to have my hands full with this for a while.”

“How’d that go, by the way?” I asked. “The schematics you drew for the shield?”

Rig shook his head. “It was like I worried. I took the drawings to my superiors, but when I couldn’t explain what was supposed to be different about this new shield I’d ‘designed,’ it didn’t go anywhere. M-Bot’s shield—and his GravCaps—are beyond my ability to figure out. We need real engineers studying the ship, not an intern.”

We shared a look, then Rig turned back to his work. Neither of us wanted to extrapolate further on that idea, the growing truth that we really should have turned M-Bot in. I hid behind the fact that he didn’t want us to, and had threatened to destroy his own systems if we did. Truth was, we were both probably committing treason by working on him in secret.

Rig looked like he needed to concentrate, so I stopped bothering him. I gave Doomslug a rub on the “head,” to which she trilled in enjoyment. Then I climbed out of the cavern and started walking.

“Where are you going?” M-Bot asked when I clicked the radio on.

“I need something to do,” I said. “Something other than just sitting there, dwelling on what I’ve lost.”

“When I am like that, I write a new subroutine for myself.”

“Humans don’t work the same way,” I said, radio to my head. “But something you said has me thinking. You mentioned needing proper information to judge how to act.”

“Early AIs were unwieldy things,” he said. “They had to be programmed to take actions based on explicit circumstances—and so each discrete decision had to include a list of instructions for each possibility.

“More advanced AIs are able to extrapolate. We rely on a base set of rules and programs, but adapt our choices based on similar situations we have encountered. However, in both cases, data is essential to making proper choices. Without past experiences to rely upon, we cannot guess what to do in the future. That is more than you wanted to know, but you commanded me to leave Rodge alone, so I’m finding things to say to you.”

“Thank you, I guess.”

“Also, human beings need someone friendly to listen to them when they’re grieving. So feel free to talk to me. I will be friendly. You have nice shoes.”

“Is that the only thing you notice about people?”

“I’ve always wanted shoes. They’re the sole piece of clothing that makes any sense, assuming ideal environmental conditions. They don’t play into your strange and nonsensical taboos about not letting anyone see your—”

“Is this really the only thing you can think of to comfort someone who is grieving?”

“It was number one on my list.”

Great.

“The list has seven million entries. Do you want to hear number two?”

“Is it silence?”

“That didn’t even make the list.”

“Move it to number two.”

“All right, I … Oh.”

I lowered the radio, walking along my familiar path. I needed to be doing something, and they wouldn’t let me fly. But maybe I could answer a question.

Somewhere in the DDF headquarters was a holorecording of the Battle of Alta. And I was going to find it.